Return to the Land

The Frontier

Some understanding of the geo-political boundaries of the Shenandoah Valley and the colonial frontier helps to set the stage for the Miller influences to follow. By the late 1600’s eastern Virginia had been settled with the central government located in Williamsburg. In 1779 the capitol was moved to Richmond as western expansion continued. British rule influenced the naming of the towns, counties, and regions many of which were named after English families and royalty. As pioneers settled the Shenandoah the British Crown wanted to claim more and more of the western territories. This eventually led to the French and Indian War, which was a dispute over land to the west of the Shenandoah Valley. England wanted to encourage settlers to inhabit the Shenandoah in order to establish more territory under the Crown’s rule. A scheme was devised whereby individual settlers or “squatters” could own land and be granted deeds to property. The government arranged for large tracts of land to be granted or given to certain prominent individuals. These land-holding individuals would in turn sell and grant deeds to the populace. On September 6, 1736 there was granted to William Beverly, John Randolph, Richard Randolph, and John Robinson 118,491 acres of land “Beyond the Great Mountains of th e River Sherando called the Manor of Beverly”. 6 Another tract of land was granted in 1739 to Benjamin Borden that contained 92,100 acres known as the Borden’s Grant. Other large parcels were the James River Grant and the Roanoke Grant containing 100,000 acres. In deeding land to many settlers from these large grants communities began to spring up and local governing bodies were formed within the Virginia colony. As the region became settled there was a need for determining boundary lines for owner s’ convenience as well as political and economic reasons. For our interest in this matter Botetourt County becomes a focal point. Large territories and counties gave way to smaller subdivided areas. The following diagram illustrates how the county of Botetourt came into existence. This derivation of counties is important because the genealogical facts were found in courthouse records of Orange, Augusta, and particularly Botetourt. Many searches began with reviewing F.B. Kegley ’s Kegley’s V irginia Frontier that is an accumulation of old courthouse records and deeds from 1760-1783. Botetourt County originally encompassed an enormous territory. The present-day boundaries would begin at the town of Fincastle, southward to the borders of North Carolina and Tennessee, westward to include the states of Kentucky, Illinois and most of Indiana, touching on the southern part of Wisconsin and Lake Michigan, and down the Mississippi to the western border of Kentucky. Botetourt County was named for Lord Botetourt born Norborne Berkeley

6 F.B. Kegley, Kegley’s Virginia Frontier; the beginning of the Southwest; the Roanoke of colonial days, 1740 -1783 (Roanoke, Virginia: Southwest Virginia Historical Society, 1938), p. 38.

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